Thieving abilities explained

Comments

Beamdog have introduced a further check in the EE in the form you outlined. It's quite possible for your pickpocket attempt to succeed, but for you to be told that the target has no items a thief of your ability can get.

How long does it take to detect a trap or an illusion from the moment the detect traps/illusions mode is activated?

This changes depending on the character. It is rigged to go off at a random point in a round based on the characer's actorID, (which is a completely internal value). If you hit the button at the worst possible time you will be waiting for 99 ticks... or ~6.6 seconds. Hit the button at the best possible time and you will instantaneously detect traps / illusions.

Edit: So you can say it will take between 0-6.6 seconds for the ability to fire the first time.

Detect/Disarm/Open difficulty of 100 is impossible. Greater or less than 100 is possible.

Stealth multipliers are x0.5 to x0.67, I cannot get more accurate.

Set Traps has a critical failure - I'm not sure of the range, but would suspect 5%, and it is affected by luck. On a critical failure the trap is sprung on the character setting it. It actually applies a different spell to the user, suffixed "F", but the Bounty Hunter's Special Snare lacks such a spell, so it won't spring on the user, but it will still fail.

i have no sure data about it as i don't look into the game files, i go by trial and error.
but i would say that in bg2 there are 2 traps that can not be disabled, a giant trap in the maze under the asylum and a trapped picture in the neb's house. the first always kill you, use an alternative route or send a summon to trigger it, possibly the second one need a very high score, but probably is impossible to disable, has to be tanked (acid damage resistance or high hp).

this 2 excluded many more competent then me people tells that there is no need to push the open lock and disable trap ability over 100, but i don't know the exact values of the traps and the math beyond the success or failure.

For each thieving skill, a character has a base stat, which includes the points spent on level up, as well as bonuses given by opcodes. But each thieving skill also has an adjusted stat, which includes the base stat plus racial and Dexterity bonuses. The base stat can only reach 255, but the adjusted stat can be higher than 255.

But here's where it gets tricky. When your thief levels up, although spending points increments the base stat, the number shown in the slot on the level-up screen is the adjusted stat. Furthermore, even though the adjusted stat can potentially be higher than 255, the level-up does not let you increase the base stat enough to make the adjusted stat higher than 255. For example, if your character gets +50 to a skill from racial and Dexterity bonuses, leveling up can increase the base stat up to 205 (which would make the adjusted stat 205 + 50 = 255).

How would you increase the adjusted stat further, then? By using items such as Potions of Master Thievery that increase the base stat. If your character had an adjusted Pick Pockets skill of 205 + 50 = 255, then using two Potions of Master Thievery would increase the stat to 255 + 50 = 305.

There's another way to put more points in a skill than you ordinarily could: lower your Dex while leveling up. The Mustard Jelly form on the Cloak of the Sewers is good for this with a Dex of 9, resulting in penalties of -10 to -20 to most thieving skills. Unlike the item-based solution, the gains from this are permanent.

But - be careful. There's no check in the level-up process to limit you to 255 base points in the skill. If you have worse than -5 in a skill from the combination of race and Dex, you can keep going past 255 base points. What happens then? It wraps back around; 256 is the same as zero. And no, you don't get a chance to undo and lower your skills back out of that. Once you've wrapped around, those 256 points are forever lost.

At 9 Dex, the following race/skill combinations can wrap around from greatness to incompetence:
Human, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, or Dwarf in Move Silently.
Human, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, Elf, or Halfling in Set Traps.

A rule of thumb I use for "being in a shadow or unlit area" is when the infravision red glow kicks in (basically the only use for this ability I have ever come across!). I guess this would correspond to the multiplier of 1? Can anybody confirm?

If you're actually in a shadow or otherwise unlighted area, that's a multiplier of 1. I'm pretty sure daylight is the 0.5 multiplier, and indoor lighted areas are the 0.67.

Thanks, I have updated the first post with this info.

For what it's worth, this mechanic seems so wrong to me. I will gladly accept that a very stealthy individual can become virtually invisible in dark areas. I will even make an effort and believe that the same can happen in indoor lighted areas. But a bloke somehow becoming invisible in the middle of a meadow under the shiny sun of midday? Sorry, but that's too much of a stretch for me...

the mechanic is surely wrong, not only for the reason you tell about, but, and mainly, because after a thief or stalker is successfully hidden he can move in full light places, stand right in front of an enemy and will continue to be invisible until the next check.
hide in shadows and move silently are supposed to be thieving skills, not magical things like the invisibility spells, but behave much more like spells then as the ability of a trained thief to move in a sneaky way.

RP wise it has no sense, but as it can lead to an interesting game play, a player that is skilled in using rogues can use it for multiple purposes, well beyond the occasional stabbing a mage, giving a great tactical value to the game play, i am quite happy that HiS and MS are implemented this way.

a well used thief can waste whole mage's spell books, appearing at the edge of their sight field and as they begin to target him doing a step backward and hiding, before the on target spell casting is complete.
he can also appear, having the enemies following him, and hide when he want them to stop, at least in vanilla they stop right next the place he hide, relocating the enemies, or part of them, in the way you want can give to the party an enormous tactical advantage.
there are many other situations and tactics where HiS and MS can be used very effectively, if combined with stabbing, and 2 corners in a dungeon mean potentially infinite stabbing with no retaliation, or combined with traps, rogue ones and arcane spells that trigger like the traps, what a rogue can do is even much more powerful.

i could continue, as there is many more then this, like to hide protected by the cloak to have the enemy waste all his true sight, then use improved invisibility and PI without the risk that a single spell kill your buffs and/or clones, to solo a rogue trough a vanilla or hard modded game can teach a lot about how the hiding as implemented in the games is powerful and fun to use, and how the more advanced the tactics a thief uses the more skill is needed by the player as correct timing, of how long hide last and when the next hide is possible, the correct use of the light map of a place and the terrain features, like every obstruction that can put the thief outside the sight of the enemy for the split second that he needs to hide (i know that technically is the opposite, the thief sight is what matters...), the relative speed of thief and who try to chase him need precise planning and a flawless execution to work.

But - be careful. There's no check in the level-up process to limit you to 255 base points in the skill. If you have worse than -5 in a skill from the combination of race and Dex, you can keep going past 255 base points. What happens then? It wraps back around; 256 is the same as zero.

if i am not wrong this risk is also real over buffing with potions, even if in that case it is undone as soon as the potions effect expire.
to stack too many potions to be sure to steal something up to the point that the skill goes over 255 mean to make your thief not able to steal...
it is a novice mistake, but can happen so it is useful to tell it here.

No, the potion effect caps at 255 base points, and you can't overbuff. A quick test:
Level 1 Halfling Thief with 19 Dex, 40 base points in Pick Pockets.
PP and OL each have +35 from race and Dex, so they start at scores of 75 and 35 respectively. Now, start drinking potions of Master Thievery. The first five work fully, increasing those scores to 275 and 235. The sixth hits the cap for Pick Pockets, increasing the scores to 290 and 275. The seventh hits the cap for Open Locks, increasing the scores to 290 and 290.
Said thief can now shoplift from Winthrop with impunity and open all of the locks. Adjusted scores of over 255 work fine.

Stealth checks are totally unrealistic - it's based on your line of sight, not whether anyone can see you.
Blinding yourself is nearly a functional alternative to Hide in Plain Sight - and it's not a bad trade off so long as you re-hide after every attack, as both give a +4/-4 modifier to hit and be hit (in melee at least).

Stealth checks are totally unrealistic - it's based on your line of sight, not whether anyone can see you.
Blinding yourself is nearly a functional alternative to Hide in Plain Sight - and it's not a bad trade off so long as you re-hide after every attack, as both give a +4/-4 modifier to hit and be hit (in melee at least).

That means the Infinity Engine uses the logic of a toddler: I want to hide from my friend, so I cover my eyes and now he can no longer see me

as the view range is the same for every creature in the unmodded game probably was easier to check who is in sight of the thief then check for all the enemies in the area if they see the thief.
this open the exploit of blinding a thief, but as it is clearly an exploit i don't see a problem.

for me is much more unrealistic that a hidden thief can go in a full light spot right in front of the enemies and is not detected until the next check.
as is not realistic that if a mage target a thief with a spell that is not fast if the thief disappear because he run outside of the view range of the caster the mage can continue to cast the spell, targeting a person that at the moment he actually pull off the spell is not in sight, but if the thief hides the mage can not complete the cast and loose the spell. if the mage don't see the thief how can he know that the thief has hidden in shadows?

those are things that make fun and powerful to use a thief but are completely not realistic.

Set Traps has a critical failure - I'm not sure of the range, but would suspect 5%, and it is affected by luck.

I'm currently playing ToB with Jan and can't remember any critical failure when setting traps in a really long time, after having set hundreds of traps. I don't think I've used anything that affects his luck. Is it possible that critical failures are cancelled by something, or maybe that they disappear at high levels?